He keeps forgetting Darlene
by NezumiPi
Summary: "Did you forget who I am again?" Elliot has forgotten Darlene before. This is the story of the first time Elliot forgot, and of his first hospitalization, at age 16. Includes non-graphic child maltreatment.


" _He forgot who I was again."_

Elliot has forgotten Darlene before. This is the story of the first time Elliot forgot, and of his first hospitalization, at age 16.

* * *

"Hi, Elliot," says Angela. She has caller ID. Her voice sounds bright, happy to be the one called instead of the one calling, for once. But the caller isn't Elliot.

"You need to come over here," hisses Darlene, "right now." There's a little whistle on the phone line, and then, "Elliot's very, very sick or something. I came home from school and I found him in the bathroom, just crying and there's glass everywhere."

"Shouldn't you call nine-"

"You _know_ my mom will freak. And we need help _now_!" shouts Darlene and she hangs up the phone.

It's only three blocks. Angela doesn't ride her bike much these days – she turned sixteen four months ago and she wants to exercise her learner's permit at every opportunity. But her bike's in good condition, right there in the garage. Worth it. Faster. What the hell is going on? She drops the bike in the Alderson's back yard. She didn't bring a lock – if someone steals it, oh well. She goes in the back door, doesn't bother knocking. She's here often enough anyway, and this is an emergency. (God, it better be an emergency. If this is one of Darlene's stupid pranks, Angela will-)

Darlene is sitting at the bottom of the stairs. She looks scared. "He doesn't know who I am," she whispers.

Angela takes her hand, playing the role of the comforting big sister. "Let's go see. I'm sure everything's going to be fine," says Angela, but she's not sure, not sure at all.

At the top of the stairs, Angela can see into the bathroom. The mirror is shattered into a few big pieces and lots of tiny ones. Ms. Alderson has a strict rule about shoes in the house, so Darlene is in bare feet. Normally, Angela obeys, but today, in her panic, she forgot. Angela releases Darlene's hand, "Got put shoes on. Or slippers. Something with hard soles," and the girl backs away to put something safer on her feet.

Angela takes another step forward, to the threshold of the bathroom. There's blood, she can see that now, on the mirror, the sink, the floor, but not a lot. Elliot is sitting in the tub. There's blood on his right hand – not an alarming amount, but that's the only element of the scene that isn't alarming. Apart from blood and tears, the scene is dry. At least he didn't shower with his clothes on, like TV people do when they have a breakdown. Elliot's hands are wrapped around his legs, his eye sockets pressed into his knees. He's rocking slightly, whispering quickly and unintelligibly to himself.

"Elliot?" whispers Angela. She can hear Darlene return, her footsteps heavy in the hallway.

Slowly, very slowly, Elliot turns his head. His lips are still moving like he's talking, but no sound is coming out. It's hard to see distinct tears with at this point, but he's squeezing his eyes, sniffling, and swallowing.

Darlene pushes past, into the bathroom. She reaches for her brother. "Elliot, come on, you've got to get up. We've got to clean this up before mom gets home."

"Get out of my house!" hisses Elliot.

"It's my house, too! And mom's going to flip her shit if we don't-"

Elliot hits Darlene. Hard. His fist, her face. She stumbles back with a yelp and Angela catches her, shuffling her into the hallway.

"Okay," says Angela, "I know you wanted to handle this without adults, but that's not going to happen. He needs to go to the hospital. I can call your mom or my dad. Pick."

"Mom's going to find out if he goes to the hospital, either way."

"Yeah, she is. But it might…it might be easier for Elliot – and for you too – if we sort of delayed her finding out." Angela doesn't know everything there is to know about Mrs. Alderson, but she knows enough.

"Yeah," Darlene nods rapidly. "Okay. Okay. What's wrong with him? Can they fix-"

"I have no idea," says Angela. "Stay right here, just outside the room. I'm going to go call my dad." She understands Darlene's desire to keep this quiet, though she has no idea how they could have possibly replaced the mirror before Mrs. Alderson gets home from work. This is bad. This is bad. While the line rings, she gets ice out of the freezer and wraps it in a dishtowel. For Darlene's face. Keep the swelling down.

"Hey, Elliot," says Angela's father. "I'm pretty sure she's out right now, but I can have her call you when-"

"It's me," she interrupts. "I'm at Elliot's. And he's really…he's having a nervous breakdown or something. He _hit_ Darlene. Hard. His mom's at work. I'd call her but…you know how she is."

There's a beat of silence. "Okay," says Don Moss, "now no one's going to be in trouble, but is he on drugs?"

"He smokes pot sometimes," admits Angela, without hesitation. Just because Elliot uses, doesn't mean she does (she does). "And that's it, as far as I know."

"Okay, I'll be there in a minute. Don't put yourself in danger. Just stay out of his way."

"He's not-" begins Angela, but her father has already hung up the phone. She heads back up the stairs with her dish towel full of ice. She listens to Darlene trying to reason with her brother. She waits.

Her father arrives and they gently coax Elliot into his truck.

"I want my dad," says Elliot.

"Yeah, I hear you," says Don Moss, sympathetic, but noncommittal. He can't tell whether Elliot actually expects his request to be met, or if he's just talking about missing the dead. He turns to Angela. There's only three seats in the truck, so all four of them can't go. "Help clean up, then take Darlene over to our house."

"I _want_ my _dad_ ," whines Elliot again, more forceful, more insistent.

The truck starts. Angela and Darlene go back inside the Alderson house. Angela starts looking for a broom and dustpan to clean up the shattered mirror. Darlene settles onto the couch, sullen, and says, "This is the shittiest birthday ever."

* * *

 **Four days before the incident**

Jonathan Pardee brought his older brother's porn magazines to school. He thinks he's some kind of dealer, cutting apart the images and selling them for a dollar each. He gave me a freebie, hoping to get a new nudie addict paying for his wares, which was poor business sense on his part. First of all, there's plenty of pornography online. Second, this picture doesn't get me aroused at all.

It's a woman – she's naked, lightly tanned and airbrushed, hairless from the neck down. She's kneeling, legs apart, head angled up like she's pleading. And she's got a dick down her throat.

I hate this picture. I can't look at it without gagging. But I keep looking at it, because every time I do, I see my dad. I see him at his worst, but I still see him and that's worth a lot. When it was getting near the end, when he was spending all day lying in bed and listening to old records, he started refusing to sign anything. No more chemo consent, no more depositions, no more advance directives. That's how he ended up in the hospital without a do-not-resuscitate order. And that's how one day, when his whole body was breaking down, they put him on a respirator.

I remember it, all colors and shapes and hands detached from the people who were steering them. The alarm on his vital sign monitor. The metal bar that held his tongue down. The plastic tube they shoved down his throat. They were gagging him, choking him, and I couldn't look away. When I got home that day, I took a thin PVC pipe and tried to intubate myself because I had to prove that it wasn't as terrible as it looked, that it actually wasn't so bad. It was. It was terrible. I vomited, but the pipe was in the way so I choked on the vomit and I ended up scratching the top of my throat which hurt for days. I also got strep throat two days later. Probably not a coincidence.

Anyway, that's what oral sex reminds me of.

And now I have this picture that makes me think about being intubated. Thanks, Jonathan Pardee. I'm looking at it and not looking at it, when Darlene barges into my room without knocking. As she walks in, she glitches – hangs frozen in place for a second while my brain buffers. That's been happening more and more lately.

"Ugh," she says, before I can put the picture away, "that's so gross."

That's when it occurs to me that no one's taught Darlene about sex or puberty or any of that. Dad taught me the basics before he died, enough that I was able to work out the rest, but I can't picture mom talking about that stuff. The information we get in school is pathetic, just a vague VHS tape about "changes" that morphs into an ad for deodorant. It's sponsored by Arrid X-tra Dry.

She needs to know. She has the internet – I showed her how to evade NetNanny when she was seven – so she already knows what double penetration looks like, but she needs to know about tampons and acne and stuff. She sure as hell doesn't want to hear it from me, any more than I want to say it. So a book. I'll get her a book.

* * *

 **Kennedy University Hospital, Pediatric Psychiatric Ward**

I'm dressed in blue scrubs that are too large for my frame. I can't have a belt, so I have to hold the pants up with one hand whenever I stand. They bandaged the cuts on my hands. I don't remember getting them. I don't remember coming here.

If I were going to kidnap someone and drug them into submission, a fake hospital would be a pretty damn good way to do it.

There are other patients here. I ignore them. They ignore me. Honestly, we get along great.

They did tests on me. Blood, urine, hair. An EEG. Cognitive tests. An extremely long questionnaire called the MMPI-A that I found offensively invasive. It's the questionnaire that Dr. Ayotte is talking about right now.

"I have your IQ estimate right here, so I know you know what the word 'valid' means. Your MMPI-A is invalid. We have ways of knowing if you aren't being honest."

Damn. This is a hack without preparation. I don't know anything about this test, about the procedures around here, and the staff don't discuss enough that I can pick it up by listening in. The doctor sounds angry. She has no right to be. I don't owe her anything. But it's not in my best interests to piss her off.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I can't concentrate."

"We're trying to help you, Elliot. We need to figure out what happened to you yesterday, and how to prevent it from happening again."

"Do you want me to try the survey again?" I say this slowly because I really don't want to deal with that thing. There were questions about my mother. And my father. Things I don't want to think about.

"We like that one because it's thorough, but if you're having concentration problems, we'll give you a different one – much shorter – but you have to promise me you're going to tell the truth. Can you do that, Elliot?"

"Yes," I say, even though it's not right. Forget whether or not I _want_ to tell the truth; I'm not sure that I _can_.

* * *

 **Three days before the incident**

"Elliot! Elliot!" The first time Angela says my name, it's sing-song. The second time is sharp. Actually, it might not be the first and second time. Might be the fifth and sixth for all I know. I glitched again, only this time the other person unfroze before I did.

"What?" My voice is dull, empty and grey.

"The light?" She points to the traffic signal, which is red.

"Right," I say, "yeah."

"Did you finish your chem lab stuff?"

"I hate lab. I hate my partner. I wish you were my lab partner."

"Well," says Angela, "if you'd do your homework, you'd be in honors chemistry with me and then we could be lab partners."

"Then, you wouldn't have to work with Steve," I say. Almost a smile.

"Oh, god, Steve is the worst!" moans Angela, in complaining camaraderie. "Last week, he couldn't figure out how to read a thermometer."

"He's an indictment of the whole honors chemistry system."

Angela laughs. I like it when she laughs.

* * *

 **Kennedy University Hospital, Pediatric Psychiatric Ward**

"You've been walking up and down the halls," says Dr. Ayotte. "Why is that?"

"Just feel like it," I say.

"It's a side effect of the medication, called akathisia. We can treat it if it's bothering you, or it will probably go away on its own in a week or two."

"Doesn't bother me."

"That's good. Are you having any other side effects? Dry mouth? Fatigue? Blurred vision?"

"I can't concentrate," I say. It's still true.

"I'm afraid that's the illness, not the drug. But it will get better. Have you ever been prescribed psychiatric medication before?"

"Sertraline. For depression. Maybe a year ago. I took it for about a week, but it wasn't working, so I stopped."

"Sertraline takes two to six weeks for full effect. You may have stopped it too soon."

I shrug. They've got me on risperidone now. Much stronger stuff. Makes me miss sertraline. I thought about cheeking the pills, but they watch me take them and I never learned much sleight-of-hand. If I could concentrate normally, I'd make a mental note to learn legerdemain as soon as I get out of this place, but honestly it's taking all my available effort just to keep nodding while the doctor talks.

"…which is why it's so important we understand the event that brought you here."

"I don't remember." This is no more than slightly false.

"Do you remember the beginning of the day?"

"I woke up. Brought in the paper. Put away the dishes. Got Darlene up for school."

"Was your mother home?"

"No." I shake my head. "She has a church thing on Tuesday mornings."

"Tell me about that morning."

"It was normal. We got ready for school. I had toast for breakfast."

Dr. Ayotte says nothing. Is she waiting for me to continue? Does she know something? I try to remember what was going on that day. It was just like every other day. I couldn't find my history textbook. Darlene didn't eat breakfast. I washed my plate and dried it. I-.

"It was my sister's birthday," I say. I'm not sure whether I just remembered this, or if I knew it all along and finally decided to admit it aloud.

"How old?"

"Twelve."

"Did you do anything special?" asks Dr. Ayotte.

My mouth has formed the /n/ in no and I'm debating explaining that my mother doesn't approve of birthday celebrations when I realize that I did do something special. "I gave her a present."

"What did she say?"

"Ew."

"Excuse me?"

"She said 'ew'."

"I imagine it hurt your feelings, that your sister didn't like the gift." Dr. Ayotte sounds sincere. She's good at sounding sincere.

I say, "She wasn't supposed to like it." I sound indifferent. I think I am. "It was one of those bodies-growing-up books."

"You were concerned for her well-being, that she might be confused or upset going through puberty without a guide."

I say nothing.

"According to your file, your father died when you were eight."

I say nothing.

"I'm going to guess that you know what it's like to go through puberty without a guide."

* * *

 **Two days before the incident**

The head librarian at the branch nearest my house is Dolores Walker, age 67. Unmarried, no children, three cats. I approve of her.

Like a lot of librarians, she's a first amendment junkie – freedom of speech, freedom of the press, et cetera. She celebrates banned books week the way my mom celebrates Easter. She's the reason Washington Township owns four copies of _Heather Has Two Mommies_ and two of _Mein Kampf_.

When I was thirteen, I used her for social engineering practice. I asked her to help me find _Catcher in the Rye_ and shyly promised not to shoot John Lennon. She's been fond of me ever since, directing my attention to what she thinks of as subversive literature: _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_ , _Slaughterhouse Five_ , _The Anarchist Cookbook_ (okay, the last one is actually pretty extreme, but I've had a personal copy since I was eleven).

Honestly, if she'd been born forty years later, she'd probably make a good hacker.

I've helped her a few times since then. I made sure a competitor's bid for some used furniture she wanted for the children's area got misfiled. I got her a discount on utilities last December, when the budget was all but empty. And I closed the security breach that let me hack the library in the first place – not without leaving myself a backdoor, of course.

I feel guilty at the prospect of stealing from the library, from Dolores Walker. Unfortunately, the only bookstore within walking distance is _Words of Inspiration: Christian Literature_ , which, if it has puberty books at all, will probably tell Darlene that menstrual blood is a sign of original sin.

I'm at the library. I don't remember walking here. Must've been on autopilot.

Doesn't matter.

Dolores smiles when she sees me. "We just got a copy of _The Motorcycle Diaries_ ," she says. "It's by Che Guevara. You might want to check it out."

I thank her for the recommendation. At least, that's what I mean to do, but I'm fairly certain I didn't say anything out loud. I should start wearing headphones all the time, so people don't expect me to respond. But no, if I did that, they would touch me to get my attention. That's worse.

I spend almost twenty minutes comparing different puberty books before I settle on _Your Body, Yourself_. Darlene won't like it – in fact, she'll hate it – but she might at least flip through it as needed. That's worth something. I take a small magnet out of my backpack to degauss the security strip. I don't know exactly how the security system works, but it can't possibly be very powerful, so I only give it two or three passes before I put the book in my bag. No one sees me because it's a library and people only see what they expect to see.

* * *

 **Kennedy University Hospital, Pediatric Psychiatric Ward**

I don't know enough about psychiatry. That's why I'm learning from this experience. Partial information – glances at files, things overheard – is better than nothing, but I have no context to understand it.

I'm not angry at Angela or her father for bringing me here, or at Darlene for calling them in the first place. They were scared and they didn't know what else to do. The staff here told me that I punched Darlene because I thought she was a stranger. I want them to be lying, but that's an awfully specific lie.

Dr. Ayotte suggested that I write her a letter of apology. "I think you two have a good relationship. You're obviously a very caring older brother. She'll forgive you. She's old enough to understand that you weren't yourself."

 _Not myself_. How could I not be myself? If mental illness was controlling my behavior, then mental illness is part of myself. This person who smashed a mirror with glass ground down into my knuckles, that person is me, right? Who else could it be?

I can almost remember breaking the mirror. I remember that I didn't like the way I looked. Not ugly, just wrong. Like I'd been photoshopped, something unreal and out-of-place, even if I couldn't figure out exactly what was wrong.

This hospital is old. Old walls, old pipes, old ductwork. What kind of priorities do we as a society have when we spend more on sports arenas than we do on the facilities that keep us alive? I've been tapping the vents. The staff think it's more of that medication-induced jitteriness, that akathisia, but it's not. I've been mapping the airflow, figuring out the acoustics of a ward that tries for privacy but not all that hard.

And that's why I'm sitting here, in the dayroom, next to a half-finished craft project that was probably started months ago and will literally never be done. I force my legs to be still so I can hear better. Because from this exact spot, I can just barely make out the conversation Dr. Ayotte is having with my mother.

"I got a call from our insurance today. They don't think he needs this." I normally try to avoid my mother's voice, but this is important. I need to know what they're saying about me.

"You have TrueHealth, right?" asks Dr. Ayotte. "I'm afraid we've worked with them before. They always push for release after 48 hours, regardless of circumstances. If you just call in an appeal, they'll usually approve an additional 48 while they decide."

"Why is he in here at all? He skipped school and trashed the bathroom. That's not an illness. If he's sick, then what'd you diagnose him with, hmm? What's wrong with him?"

"That process takes time. I can show you my preliminary report, but we need more observation to be sure. In the meantime, we also need to stabilize him and develop a long-term treatment plan."

There's some paper-rustling sounds, then silence. Then, my mother speaks. "Mood disorder _noss_ , what's that?"

"N-O-S," says Dr. Ayotte. "Not otherwise specified. It means he has mood disorder symptoms, but doesn't fit any single profile exactly."

"So another way of saying you don't know," says my mother. I can hear the disdain. I'm not sure if Dr. Ayotte can.

"There's some things we are sure of. Social phobia, which is a very treatable condition. We're also sure this wasn't caused by drugs, although any drug use probably isn't helpful."

That's interesting. They did a tox screen on me. Pot stays in the system for weeks. They must have detected it, but Dr. Ayotte deliberately avoided confirming that I had used drugs.

"Schizophrenia?" That's my mother's voice again. "You think he's nuts?"

"See where it says R-slash-O next to it? That means 'rule out'. It means it's a possibility that we're going to consider, but honestly it's unlikely. His thought process is quite linear, whereas in schizophrenia, we see more disordered thinking. His self-report inventory was more strongly suggestive of a dissociative condition called depersonalization disorder. That means-"

"I know what it means," snaps my mother. This may or may not be true. She's a very intelligent woman, but there's no reason for her to know specific psychiatry terms. _I_ don't know what the word means, though I can guess from the Latin roots. _Dis_ is separation, and _soc_ is joining. So separating that which was joined? When I get out of here, I'm sure Dolores Walker can find me a book on dissociative conditions, whatever they are.

"Ms. Alderson, most serious mental illness emerges between the ages of 15 and 25. We don't yet know for sure what happened to Elliot, but I for one would like to deal with this before it gets worse."

* * *

 **One day before the incident**

We don't normally do birthday presents in the Alderson house, not since my dad died. No party, no cake. My mom thinks it's a waste.

 _You already think you're so damn special. You don't need a personal celebration every damn year._

My mom is scrupulous about waste. We never leave lights on. Showers are five minutes or less. We have a dishwasher, but we never use it. We have to wash dishes the night they're used, obviously. Can't let them sit. But it would be wasteful to run the dishwasher if it wasn't full, so the only way we'd ever get to use it would be if we just happened to use a full load of dishes in one evening. And it's just the three of us, so that's never going to happen.

Food, we have to be very careful with. We have to eat the last tiny scraps of things – the last scrape of peanut butter in the jar, the crushed-up dust in the bottom of the cereal box – before she'll buy more. (That's why Darlene and I stopped eating cereal entirely three years ago.) We can't let anything spoil either. That's a disaster.

We're not poor. Lower middle class, maybe, but not poor. We can afford to throw away bread with mold spots or buy a new gallon of milk when there's only a few teaspoons left in the old one. But we don't.

Birthdays are a waste.

This is my plan. Darlene has ballet after school and mom works until 5:15. The Moss's will bring Darlene home at 4:55.

It is 3:27 pm. If I start now, I can make a brownies, clean up while they're cooking, and share them with Darlene when she gets home. Then we'll hide the leftovers, trash the disposable pan, and have no sign of it by the time mom returns.

I know a cake is traditional for birthdays, but the 7-11 had brownie mix, not cake mix.

I've never done any baking before, but there are only three ingredients. It seems pretty much impossible to mess up. Add the oil. Crack the eggs, get the eggshells out of there. Stir, pour, bake. I wash and dry the bowl and the whisk. I set the timer on the oven and lay down for a nap.

I wake up at 5:16 to the following facts:

1\. There is a message on the answering machine from Angela saying that they've stopped for dinner and Darlene will be home late.

2\. The timer must have never gone off. I couldn't have slept through it, right? My mother is home now. The kitchen is full of smoke and the brownies are carbonized dust.

Mom is furious. I can hear what she's yelling, but her voice has a strange quality to it, like I'm hearing it over the radio. She's pointing to the brownies and I realize she expects me to eat them. We don't waste food. But they're not brownies, they're ashes. We don't waste food. I take a spoon and I'm retching and I'm gagging and I can see them intubating dad and-

" _It's called 'canned air'," says dad. He tosses me a canister that looks a little like a shaving cream can, but with a long thin nozzle. "You can use it to clean the dirt out of connectors. It allows the leads to make good contact. Here," he points to a printer cable, "give it a try."_

 _I aim the nozzle and press down, bracing as if I expect recoil. There's none, though dust does fly back and hit me in the face. It gets in my mouth and I spit reflexively. A little goes into my nose, but I hold back the sneeze._

 _Dad laughs and waves his hand back and forth to clear the air. "Very good for a first run! Just got to fine tune that technique there." He pats me on the back. "Can you help me get all of these ports? I'll get you a soda to wash down all that junk."_

 _This is a real job. This actually needs to be done and I can do it. I smile at dad. I nod. I'm eager to help. We spend…hours, it must be hours, working with the canned air, cleaning all the connectors in the shop. We talk about the parts as we clean them. There's dust in the air and it gets in my mouth and I have to squint to keep it out of my eyes, but I'm helping, I'm really helping._

 _Dad pulls me in for a hug. "Great work, kiddo."_

I'm sitting on my bed. My whole chest is burning and there's a dead weight in my stomach.

Darlene is sitting next to me. "You idiot," she says, but she says it with pity. She must have gotten home while I was still eating the brownie-ash. I must have eaten it. Mom wouldn't have let me get away with less. But I don't remember at all. I just remember an afternoon working in the Mr. Robot store. What the hell just happened?

* * *

 **Kennedy University Hospital, Pediatric Psychiatric Ward**

A nurse gives me a large plastic bag with my street clothes. "You can change," she says. "You're being discharged."

I can change. I assume she means my clothes, and not my psyche. Maybe that, too.

Dr. Ayotte gives me a printout about the medication, encourages me to keep taking it. She also gives me a referral to outpatient mental health services. She knows I'm not going to use it.

I take the stairs instead of the elevator. I don't want to be around people. When I exit the lobby, I see my mother outside smoking a cigarette. I imagine her trying to light up inside, and her impotent frustration as the staff insist she put it out. It's a nice thought.

"Come on," she says.

We walk past a scruffy white man dressed like a janitor. "You're gonna be okay," he says, "kiddo."

* * *

 ** _Psychology notes_** : Sertraline (Zoloft) is an antidepressant. Risperidone (Risperdal) is an antipsychotic. Depersonalization disorder is uncontrollably feeling like you're not really a part of your own body or your own self, like Elliot's "glitches" or his experience in the mirror.

If you're waiting for me to finish another story, I'm haven't forgotten you. I've just got Mr. Robot on the brain.


End file.
